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This study aims to investigate the impact of mandatory audit partner rotation (MAPR) on Chinese listed firms’ insider trading, as well as the moderating effects of firm characteristics on this impact. The economic mechanism behind this impact is also explored.

This study conducts a regression analysis on firms associated with mandatory and voluntary audit partner rotation based on 2009–2019 firm data and examines whether corporate insiders of these two types of firms increase their share sales within 12 months before their financial statements are submitted to a new rotated auditor.

Client firms’ corporate insiders increase their share sales within 12 months before their financial statements are submitted to a new mandatory rotated auditor. In addition, such an association is less pronounced for client firms that changed from Big 4 auditors to those with higher financial constraints. This is more pronounced for client firms with higher information asymmetry. The economic mechanism of the finding is that is the MAPR implementation reduces earnings management activities from client firms. Moreover, client firms’ buy-and-hold stock returns decline in the first year after MAPR.

This study should assist investors, corporate shareholders and Chinese policymakers. Investors can be well protected through the adoption of MAPR because upcoming auditors enhance the audit quality of clients by restraining managers’ manipulation of reported earnings and declining firms’ insider trading afterwards. Investors, Chinese policymakers and corporate shareholders should pay more attention to firms’ financial report quality, auditor selection, financial situation, corporate governance and the information environment. Explicitly, firms with less transparent financial report quality, non-big 4 auditors and fewer financial constraints are more likely to be involved in insider trading.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, none of the extant studies have examined the impact of MAPR on insider sales. This study extends the research on the effect of the audit process on firm market performance by investigating the impact of audit partner rotation policy on insider trading behaviors.

The purpose of this paper is to take advantage of a natural experiment in Taiwan to test the effect of short‐sales constraints on price dynamics.

Since September 1998, short‐selling is banned at a price below the close price of the previous trading day. The new rule creates unique daily dynamics of short‐sales constraints. The paper employs a difference‐in‐difference method to evaluate whether the short‐sales constraint rule plays an important role in the price dynamics.

The results show that stock prices react to information in a way similar to if short‐selling was not banned. This is in line with the implication of a rational expectation framework like Diamond and Verrecchia.

The paper has implications on the short selling bans in the 2008/2009 credit crisis and the European debt crisis because the bans are public information as those in this setting. The rational agents in the market could incorporate the bans into price beliefs which could lead to the ineffectiveness of the policy. The short‐sales constraints may be widely imposed in the crisis but they are not the effective tools to alleviate downward price pressures.

The results suggest that the effort of the government to boost stock price by imposing short sales constraints will not be effective if rational investors take the constraints into account while forming their beliefs.

Unlike existing short‐sales constraint proxies like short interest or lending fees, the dynamic constraints do not suffer from endogeneity. Moreover, the constraints are public information and thus ideal for testing the rational expectation models, in which investors have to be aware of the level of the constraints.

Volume-based liquidity ratios suffer from potential measurement bias due to share restriction and may misrepresent actual liquidity. To address this issue, the authors develop two modified metrics, the free-float liquidity and the alternative free-float illiquidity ratios. These measures are well suited to estimate liquidity in the presence of trading constraints, as can be found in closely held/state-owned entities, IPOs/SEOs with lockup restrictions, dual-class share structures and family-owned businesses.

The authors modify the turnover illiquidity ratio, where the number of outstanding shares is scaled by the public free float, and use natural log transformation to normalize free-float liquidity. Our dataset is composed of daily observations for US stocks included in the S&P 500 index over the 2015–2018 period. To test the validity of free-float (il)liquidity ratios, the authors perform a correlation analysis for various liquidity metrics. To examine their empirical efficiency, the authors employ pooled OLS regression models for family firms as a subsample of liquidity-constrained entities, relying on five different identifiers of family-owned businesses.

The authors’ empirical testing indicates that the proposed free-float (il)liquidity ratios compare favorably with other volume-based methods, such as Amihud's ratio, liquidity ratio and turnover ratio. For the subsample of family organizations as a restricted-share setting, the authors report significant coefficients for our free-float measures across all the family firm identifiers used. In particular, as free-float decreases with progressive family influence, the advanced ratios capture an increase (decrease) in perceived liquidity (illiquidity) that is absent in the other benchmarks.

This study allows the authors to inform the ongoing debate on the management and governance of publicly listed companies with various impediments to trade. Traditional measures understate illiquidity (overstate liquidity) as the fraction of free trading shares is limited by design or circumstances. The authors’ proposed free-float metrics offer informational gains for family leaders to aid in their financing decisions and for non-family outsiders to guide their investment choice. As a constrained free float inhibits price discovery processes, the authors discuss how restricted stock issuers may alleviate the attendant negative effects on governance and information opacity.

Market liberalisation has resulted in significant changes not only in the way electricity is traded, but also for the market participants themselves. The bidding behaviour of market participants who are active in a liberalised UK‐like market has been modelled. Both operational and technical parameters associated with the market and its participants are accounted for. Explicit characterization of risk (value at risk) is made with respect to market participants and their attitude to trading. Profit maximization strategies for market participants are then developed based on the minimization of price‐risk under uncertainty. Results are presented for a selected case study and the effect of alternative strategies is compared. The case study concerns several generators who need to determine what proportion of their production they should sell to the market. The results show that based on cost and price forecasts there is scope for generators to profitably take advantage of both contractual and within‐day market trades.

This paper aims to test the political-economy hypothesis that country sizes are related with constraints associated with Chinese trade.

This study applies a generalized linear mixed approach on panel data of Southern African (henceforth SADC) economies from 2001 to 2014 to observe common Chinese trade patterns among SADC countries.

Empirical results support the hypothesis that structural differences exist and smaller SADC countries are disadvantaged in their trade relations with China.

This paper is exploratory by nature. Its scope and the depth of analysis is constrained by data availability.

The manuscript has been approved by the author and has never been published, or has been considered for publication elsewhere.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a new approach to market analysis, and test how the China‐US soybean market integration and arbitrage efficiency have changed across 1995/1‐/2004/1 – a period covering strengthened government efforts to join WTO, and the institutional changes following WTO accession.

The authors employ a regime‐switching model with parametric, semi‐parametric, and nonparametric measures to discern different market conditions in the sample period, as well as detect the structural shifts over time. Three types of data – expected prices, transaction costs, and trade flow – are used for the analysis.

Results of the analysis indicate better integration over time, but deteriorating efficiency. The markets often departed from efficient arbitrage throughout the study periods, and counter‐intuitively worsened after China's elimination of quota in 1999, and accession to WTO in 2001. One other interesting finding is that the state monopoly practice in soybean trading during the early periods produced seemingly competitive equilibrium price relationships.

The paper is an original work that provides policy implications regarding the impacts and effectiveness of government policies on China's international soybean markets, the remaining bottlenecks, and the challenge to both Chinese soybean farmers and the US exporters. The method of identifying trade variation in a price model and the combination of parametric and semi‐parametric analyses with comprehensive data further permits more accurate and intuitive interpretations previously unavailable.

This study aims to examine the possible gains and challenges for the enhancement of bilateral trade ties between India and Pakistan. It is interested specifically in analyzing and deliberating an attempt to identify the key challenges and bottlenecks in cross-border trade.

This paper offers in-depth case study of trade between India and Pakistan using time-series data and through various stake holders' interviews. As further discussed in the paper, the data investigation and interviews highlight impediments in India–Pakistan trade from trade policy to other policies involved in this process.

Based on time series data and stakeholders’ interviews, the study concludes that poor trade logistics and abysmal transport infrastructure, high tariffs and non-tariff measures, lengthy customary procedures, heavy import duties, port restrictions, lack of appropriate storage facilities, strict visa regime, financial transaction barriers and lack of telecommunication facilities are the major challenges in the way of regional trade.

The study proposes some key reforms and policy measures to boost the formal trade to minimize the trade obstacles such as public–private partnerships and inclusion of private sector in a joint trade commission to strength the business relations between the two countries.

The purpose of this study is to discuss the progress and challenges of South Asia in trade liberalization and facilitation, and to quantitatively demonstrate the potential benefits of trade facilitation in South Asia.

The quantitative study simulates the trade gains to the region based on the gravity model estimation for 101 world countries.

The gains to the region are estimated to be $31 billion in 2007 and $26 billion in 2010 if South Asia and the “rest of the world” raised levels of trade facilitation halfway to the world average. Of those trade gains, about 80 per cent (in 2007) and 67 per cent (in 2010) of the total gains to South Asia will be generated from South Asia's own efforts.

Thus this study demonstrates the importance of trade facilitation as an instrument for expansion of trade both within South Asia and with the rest of the world, as well as policy recommendations regarding the priority area for reform.

The purpose of this paper is to present a procedure for finding the efficient frontier, i.e. a non‐decreasing curve representing the set of Pareto‐optimal or non‐dominated portfolios, when the standard Markowitz' classical mean‐variance model is enriched with additional constraints.

The mean‐variance portfolio optimization model is extended to include integer constraints that limit a portfolio to have a specified number of assets, and to impose limits on the proportion of the portfolio held in a given asset. Optimization‐based procedures run into difficulties in this framework and this motivates the investigation of heuristic algorithms to find acceptable solutions.

The problem is solved by a greedy randomized adaptive search procedure (GRASP), enhanced by a learning mechanism and a bias function for determining the next element to be introduced in the solution.

This is believed to be the first time, a GRASP for finding the efficient frontier for this class of portfolio selection problems is used.

This article examines the framework of the Agreement for Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures (SPS Agreement) and assesses its impacts on domestic autonomy and authority in matters of food and environmental safety. The direct impact of the SPS Agreement appears quite limited, as only a few cases have arisen. The Agreement has not proven to be a pervasive tool for the purpose of overturning domestic policies on food or environmental safety, despite the fact that the WTO Panel or Appellate Body decisions have found that domestic measures violate the terms of the SPS Agreement. Limited enforcement mechanisms provide protection for domestic policies, though perhaps at the price of trade sanctions. Moreover, theoretical literature suggests that the SPS Agreement may indeed enhance democratic values by discounting the influence of special interests and retaining ultimate authority for enforcement within the discretion of domestic government. Important issues nevertheless remain, including the role of the precautionary principle in policymaking and the means to address normative values, such as developing moral consensus on animal welfare, in trade matters. Trade has proven to be a catalyst for change and cooperative development in this context.